A Nashville Christmas

First of all, Merry Christmas! I hope your Christmas is filled with love and time with family. Remember that Christmas is not just about the gifts and Santa making his way around the globe. It is about the birth of Jesus and he is the whole reason for the season! So don’t forget to think about him while you are opening gifts with the family.

Second of all, I feel so bad that I haven’t blogged in quite a few weeks. School got crazy and I literally had no time to myself because I was always studying and getting ready for finals. Luckily, that’s done and I have one semester left until I graduate! This blog is going to be more of a life update than anything. So, here we go and hope you have a great holiday season!

So far, winter break has treated me great. Myy huband drove the seven hours to my school and then we drove home to the east coast of Virginia to see my parents and his family as well. We had an early Christmas with family since we would not be home on Christmas day. It was so much fun getting to see everyone because we hadn’t seen them in such a long time and it will be a long time before I see them again.

After a few days, we drove the twelve hours home to Tenessee. (I drove the entire way so I am super proud of myself ;-)) Since then we have been getting into the Christmas spirit with holiday sweater parties and even an hour trip into Nashville to see Christmas lights! More on that later, though. Andres, my husband, won best holiday sweater at his work party, and we even matched with llama sweaters. I cannot believe he actually agreed to it!

On Friday evening, we decided to go on a double date with one of Andres’ friends and his wife. We wanted to go somewhere that had tons of lights and Christmas festivities. We had been to The Grand Ole Opry area before, but for Christmas, we knew it was going to be beautiful! We got tickets off Groupon for ICE: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which was being held in the convention center of the hotel. If you have not been to the Opry hotel before, it is a must if you are in the Nashville area. It is completely free to go in and walk around the atriums. I’ll talk about that more in a minute, but first…… ICE!

Inside, they give you parkas to help you brave the 9 degree temperatures inside the exhibit. They brought in a lot of artists from China to carve out over 2 million pounds of ice to create a beautiful story of the grinch told using all ice. There was even an ice slide that we could go down, however my parka came up so my pants got all wet. At the end of the story, there is a suprise room filled with a breath taking nativity scene made of crystal clear ice.

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We then walked into the hotel and were treated to amazing light shows and walks thorugh beautiful gardens. We truly had a great time on our double date, and it is really amazing to see how different places celebrate Christmas. If you wnat, there are a lot of different shows going on around the hotel, but many of them cost money, so plan accordingly.

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Next year we will be living somewhere TOTALLY different from Nashville, so I cannot wait to see what Christmas adventures we have next!

Where is your favorite place to go for Christmas? Let me know in the comments below!